The California Black Aviation Association CBAA began in 1979 as a social flying club that has since evolved into a non-profit organization of aviation professionals of various ethnic backgrounds with the passions of flying and promoting aviation awareness and education through community outreach.
The association was founded by Leonard Mackrel and Marlon Johnson, who both had visions of seeking avenues for African American private pilots to network and fellowship through their common interests in flying within a climate segregated along racial lines.
The early days of CBAA centered around flying and fellowship between pilots who were based out of Hawthorne airport. The niche eventually grew popular enough to regularly orchestrate fly-offs of 15 or more private aircraft to destinations along the west coast and beyond. The were all owned and operated by minority pilots from municipal airports throughout the entire Los Angeles basin.
The club began to extend outreach to the community through the efforts of flight instructor Darryl Mack, who saw the importance of exposing inner city youth to opportunities in aviation, and the premise of which he based his leadership after becoming the organization's president in 1992. In so doing, the association sponsored it's first "Aviation Day" during the summer of 1992 in San Diego, California and the followup "African American Aviation Awareness Day" in the summer of 1994 at Compton Woodley Airport. It was a combination of these events and other circumstances that the current iteration of the Compton Air Fair evolved.  The CBAA garnered the attention of other minority aviators and aviation related organizations nationally, and eventually directed much of it's focus on community outreach.
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